So much is there: If only she hadn’t wanted to read, if only the window had not carried a song, if only people weren’t destroyed by love. It is tiny, intimate, and messy, and it is so much more profound and ironic than even Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise a year later (or Fritz Lang’s Greenwich Village remake of La Chienne, Scarlet Street, from 1945). This is Renoir in the 1930s, the decade that had no minor films.
Chimes at Midnight (1966)
For years, it seemed, the one part for which Orson Welles had been in training was Falstaff. But it was as long ago as 1939 that he had first done the play Five Kings, his own free adaptation of the Shakespeare texts, telling the story of Sir John Falstaff and what Welles always thought of—with a fat tear in his eye—as “Merrie England.” At the age of twenty-four Welles had been Falstaff, while Burgess Meredith (seven years his senior) had been Prince Hal. But the obsession lasted, and grew.
And so in the winter of 1964, on locations near Barcelona and Madrid, Welles brought Falstaff to film, using his old Five Kings script, which draws from Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. It’s a masterpiece in which some of his modern carelessness—sound issues, continuity, and so on—are easily eclipsed by the emotional intensity. This is the film Major Amberson is seeing as he gazes into the flickering firelight. And although Welles was “only” fifty as he made the film, there’s no doubting what the midnight bell means, or what the necessary rejection by Hal stands for.
Of course, the egocentrism has not abated one bit, because Orson is Falstaff. He is the fat, boozy magician who has lost his touch. This is happening to him—and even Shakespeare knew that Falstaff dies of a broken heart. Moreover, though this film is pledged to the lovely, nostalgic view of England when it was Arden, sentimentality is crushed at every turn. Chivalry makes a few gestures, but the battle scene, done in mud and treachery, has the Somme and worse in mind. The merriment exists only in the minds of men, together with their capacity for hurt.
The photography was by Edmond Richard (he had done The Trial with Welles), and even in Spanish winter light it has exquisite moments, along with the castles and mountains that are not quite England—but who cares? Welles credits himself with “Costumes,” and the crew is all Spanish. But Spain was a country Welles loved, and it shows.
Placed in Europe, he was able to hire a remarkable cast. Keith Baxter is great as Hal, and it’s clear he was very close to Orson. John Gielgud makes an austere Henry IV. Jeanne Moreau is wonderful as Doll Tearsheet. Margaret Rutherford is Mistress Quickly, Norman Rodway is Hotspur, Marina Vlady is his wife, Alan Webb is Justice Shallow, and then there are Walter Chiari, Michael Aldridge, Tony Beckley, Fernando Rey, Andrew Faulds, José Nieto, Jeremy Rowe, Welles’s daughter Beatrice (as a page), and Paddy Bedford. Ralph Richardson is the narrator.
The film opened at the Cannes Festival in 1966 and played none too well in the following years. But in the gradual reappraisal of Welles that started in the seventies, Chimes at Midnight has been accepted as a late masterwork, as well as a reminder that if doing things in a proper, classical manner is what appeals to you, why, Welles could do that, too. But he had it in mind to be independent, experimental, an island, a Prospero as much as a Falstaff.
Chinatown (1974)
Tell me the story again, please.
Very well, there was this detective in Los Angeles, Jake Gittes, as honest as he could be after years with the LAPD. But he had had trouble in Chinatown and so retired into independent operation. Then he was set up, and you have to realize that he was sought out in just the way that Scottie was in Vertigo. Someone picked him to receive the story that Hollis Mulwray was having an affair. Trace it back and you’ll see it was all a cruel design. Jake Gittes did his best, but he was as much damage as he was good, because he fell in love on the job with a woman who was such trouble it smelled like gangrene. And so, finally, the bad man, Noah Cross, was left in charge, and they led Jake away to some hiding hole and they whispered in his ear that it was all “Chinatown.” I really don’t see why you love the story so much.
It was a story that Robert Towne, an Angeleno, dreamed up for his pal Jack Nicholson to play. And another friend, Robert Evans, would produce it at Paramount. But Evans thought that Roman Polanski should direct, and Polanski battled with Towne over the script—it had to be clearer and tougher. Towne had had a gentler ending, with less death. But Polanski knew it was a story that had to end terribly—so no one forgot. The director won, and the picture worked with its very bleak ending.
What’s more, the picture worked in every way you could think of. Faye Dunaway was the woman, and she was lovely but flawed and incapable of being trusted. John Huston was Noah Cross, and the more you see the film, the better you know that that casting is crucial, because Cross is so attractive, so winning, so loathsome. And the rest of the cast was a treat: Perry Lopez, John Hillerman, Darrell Zwerling, Diane Ladd, Roy Jenson, Burt Young, Belinda Palmer, and the others. John Alonso shot it. Richard Sylbert was the production designer. Sam O’Steen edited the film. Jerry Goldsmith delivered a great score. The craft work, the details, are things to dream on. We are in 1937. And don’t forget Polanski’s own little bit of being himself.
So it’s a perfect thriller, and a beautiful film noir in color. Moreover, if you care to look into how William Mulholland once brought the water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles, it is a piece of local history. But with this extra aspect—that accommodation of the history of southern California itself, and the fable of how sometimes power and corruption make life and the future possible—you also get another reflection on filmmaking in that world: It is that you can do very good work, work so full of affection and detail and invention that you can live with it over the years, but in the end the system will fuck you over and someone will whisper in your ear that you are not to mind, because “It’s Chinatown.”
And that’s how it worked out. There had been a trilogy in the reasonably honest mind of Robert Towne. They let him make the first part near enough to his own dream so that he would always know it could have been. And then they crushed him on the second (The Two Jakes)—blew it straight to hell—so no one had the heart ever to ask about the third.
El Cid (1961)
The films made in Spain in the early 1960s by the producer Samuel Bronston were an uneasy bunch. 55 Days at Peking marked the professional demise of director Nicholas Ray, and The Fall of the Roman Empire had a melancholy and a sense of inevitable historical disintegration that were not well suited to Anthony Mann. In Ray’s hands, King of Kings was a striving for belief from a man notoriously lacking in confidence. The only one of the four films that seemed promising, and accurately assigned, was Mann’s El Cid, which now stands as one of the last authentic epics in American film history.
Perhaps it helped that very few in the audience knew the legend of how the Spanish warrior hero had cleared the Moors out of Spain in the eleventh century. But if the energy was fresh, the opportunities provided by Spain—in landscapes and castles—was immense, and there was a fairly tidy Cold War message, in that the Moor chieftain (Herbert Lom) easily seemed like a forerunner of Fascist threats. Today, that ease is gone, of course, and El Cid is rather awkwardly anti-Islamic in its basis.
The screenplay, by Philip Yordan, emerged from his purchasing a draft that Fredric M. Frank had written years earlier for Cecil B. DeMille. All Yordan did was make sure that trials by conflict fell at regular intervals, and that the epic tale was underscored by a thwarted romance between the Cid and Jimena. It was then up to Bronston to get Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren for those roles. What Mann brought to the task was an unclouded conviction—from first to last he believes in the nobility of the Cid—and an imagination ready to make the story as good-looking as possible.
El Cid had outstanding art direction from John Moore and Veniero Colasanti, in which sheer prettiness and historical plausibility ride side by side. The photography was by Robert Krasker in 70 mm, and it is
notable for some lucid winter scenes as well as the finale on the beaches near Valencia. The great Yakima Canutt was on second unit, and Mann was still a tremendous director of intimate fight scenes—no matter that they involved heavy armor and swords as tall as men.
With music by Miklós Rózsa, El Cid begins to gather together all the arts of storytelling with the skill of The Adventures of Robin Hood. And, in truth, it is an epic that does not disappoint and that draws excellent, earnest performances from its two leads. But the richness of the film is in its supporting cast and the care that has been taken with so many smaller roles, not least Geneviève Paige, Raf Vallone, John Fraser, Hurd Hatfield, and Andrew Cruickshank, all of whom work as if in a small, intense drama. Today it’s fanciful to think of that kind of money being employed on such a story (though El Cid had rentals of $12 million, three times what it had cost). Far more important, I don’t think there are other actors, directors, or writers who could approach the monumental narrative with the same enthusiasm and faith.
The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
In the early years of the twenty-first century, various forms of poker became very hot on television. A special under-the-table camera let us see the undeclared cards, and the rest was chips and sweat. So it’s nice to give cultural credit to the influence of a silly but entertaining film, The Cincinnati Kid, which gave as good a clue to poker on the small screen as The Hustler had done with pool.
It all began life as a Martin Ransohoff production, with Sam Peckinpah set as director. Ring Lardner, Jr. did his job on the screenplay and spent a week in read-throughs with Peckinpah and the cast, making adjustments. The film began, but Peckinpah went off and shot a scene in which the Rip Torn character was in bed with his mistress—well, Sam cast a black girl, and in 1965 that was still trouble. So Ransohoff fired Peckinpah. Norman Jewison was brought in in his place, and he claimed the right to have a fresh script. To that end, Terry Southern was called on (he and Lardner never met), and Southern shifted the setting from St. Louis to New Orleans.
So the Kid is this very hot young poker player: because it’s Steve McQueen in the part, he’s also ultra cool. To prove himself, he’s going to have to beat the grand old man of the game, Lancey (Edward G. Robinson).All of this comes after the Kid, through arrogance, has let slip his sweet girlfriend (Tuesday Weld) and taken up with no-good Ann-Margret. The warning here is pointed. Ann-Margret is playing a scarlet woman in a silent film, whereas Tuesday gives every hint of lasting all through the week. So the Kid’s lack of judgment in love prepares you for who will win the card game. Still, the confrontation of two owls’ faces over the cards is well handled, and it was a delight to see Robinson in such fine fettle. One-on-one, there were few people who could surpass his concentration.
Apart from this, the Southernness is laid on like fudge sauce on a bourbon sundae. But there is a lot of local color, including Cab Calloway, and there are excellent supporting performances from Karl Malden, as the dealer and Ann-Margret’s haunted husband, and from Joan Blondell, as “Lady Fingers,” a relief dealer. One look from Edward G. and we know where she got that nickname.
Of course, the film did very well and was a vehicle in the irresistible rise of Steve McQueen, a man who seems to have been likeable in those precious gaps between “Action” and “Cut” and nowhere else. Robinson gives so much more to the film, not least that gentle, shy conversation with the cards, that wonders if the vehicle is his.
As for poker, with interest so high now, we might be in for a run of such pictures. So actors, beware: The greatest faces tend to come in second, after the face cards.
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
In the year 2007, readers of The Guardian in Britain were asked to vote for the greatest foreign-language movie ever made. Cinema Paradiso was a resounding winner. And I suppose there is a way in which that title, and this subject matter, seem to ride on a perfect United Nations film, a movie to show E.T.—actually, judging by E.T.’s voluminous tear sacs, I think he has seen it somehow, somewhere. Perhaps he left his home in a brave attempt to forget it.
So here is the story. In a little town in Sicily, not the prettiest, not the worst, there is this little boy. His name is Toto (Salvatore Cascio), and he is the prettiest: He won poster boy with heartbreaking smile two years in a row. He has a darling mama but no father, so he spends his time in the projection booth at the Cinema Paradiso, where the projectionist, Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), is a kindly fellow. I know, Noiret is French, and you wonder how he got the job in a Sicilian town. You also may wonder why he has only one 35 mm projector, not two, so he doesn’t get to make change-overs.
Well, one day nitrate film stock bursts into flame and Alfredo is blinded. Whereupon Toto takes over the job, though the old man is paid. Toto grows up, everyone gets older—you have seen this movie before? Toto as a teenager meets a lovely girl, Elena—a knockout. But her father thinks Toto unsuitable. So they break up. Alfredo urges Toto to go away—become a film director. He goes. He becomes Jacques Perrin—he becomes even Giuseppe Tornatore, maker of this film.
Alfredo dies. Toto comes back to town. Mother is very forgiving over how little he has seen her. But on the streets Toto sees—of course, it is Elena. And so Toto is eventually reunited with her (she is now Brigitte Fossey, not a bad deal for all concerned). There is a very romantic scene in a car as they talk, and the whole muddle of the past is worked out. And then—nice timing, huh?—as they pull the old Paradiso down, Toto sees a montage of the screen’s great kissing scenes.
In fact, Tornatore made a long version, and it flopped in Italy. Then a 123-minute version goes to Cannes, wins the jury prize, and later gets the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture. An international hit. Whereupon Tornatore rereleases the 174-minute version, which has all the grown-up Elena stuff and lots more chocolate sauce. What is missing is who this crybaby film director is, why he treats his Mama so bad, and what?—was there a war in Italy and fascisti and all that nasty stuff? Cinema Paradiso is mercilessly made, as a pump for tears. And it is so moving, you want to cut the projectionist’s throat. It has many film clips, of course, from Renoir to Antonioni, and a little boy’s face as seen through the booth window is a winning effect—the first dozen times you see it. After that, you’re on your own.
Citizen Kane (1941)
In his retreat, his castle and kingdom, a man is dying. Sooner or later, he will utter his last word. Does he spend hours and a year deciding what it should be, or is it just any word that occurs? In this case, whatever process arrives at the word, it is delivered with intense emotion, as a kiss for us or the camera, the mouth in full close-up, like the ship for life’s voyage. “Rosebud,” say the lips—like a Man Ray mouth, floating in time and space. And with that expiration, death seems to occur. A glass ball, holding a small house and a snowstorm, slips from the lifeless hand and cracks open on the hard floor.
Is it that noise, or the word, that brings a nurse in from outside? We never know, but we see the door open in the shard of broken glass. We realize that the word was not a call to the nurse: it was the man’s gift to us, his legacy.
Yet somehow the world seems to know that he said “Rosebud” as he died. It is just that no one knows what “Rosebud” might mean. But the word is enough to convince journalists—the newsreel people—that they do not know what this man was about, this Charles Foster Kane. “Rosebud” is a secret. It is also the best hint he could leave to make sharp minds like theirs beagles in the hunt. A man named Thompson is assigned to go off and talk to everyone in Kane’s life to find out what “Rosebud” meant. I bet it’ll be something very simple, says his editor.
And so Thompson sets off in his journey to talk to a former wife, a righthand man, a lost friend, a mysterious butler. Did you ever hear him say “Rosebud”? Thompson asks. No, never, they answer—it could have been… well, something he lost. A man with everything is likely to remember anything he lost.
One man, the butler, says he heard the word—he was close to the nurse on that las
t night. But no, he doesn’t know what it meant. And so the search is at an end. The newsreel people are at the warehouse full of Kane properties. Most of it has a date with the incinerator; the stoves are alight already. The reporters leave. The camera stays. And so we are there as a workman picks up a rough sled from the nineteenth century, a kid’s toy, and takes it to the furnace and throws it in. And is it the camera looking, or just our need to know? Is it enquiry’s just end of our pact with Kane: We heard the word; we find the answer. But as the sledge begins to burn, we see its trademark, “Rosebud,” before it starts to burn away. In the instant of discovery, the clue begins to be destroyed.
Beyond that, it is up to us to decide whether “Rosebud” is a true measure of fondness for and loss felt over those days in Colorado when Charlie refought the Civil War, cried “The Union forever!” as his parents broke up, and played in the snow when his world was all white, before the darkness came in? Or is “Rosebud” just a trick in a game, a sweet sidestep, a feint, a way of saying, Well, life has to be about something, doesn’t it, so never mind the serious things, let it be about “Rosebud” and the thought that once there was a hope and a calm and a play, though it only came to be noticed when all those things had been pushed aside in life’s dark. It’s up to us.
City Lights (1931)
Chaplin thought of a clown losing his sight. The clown has a daughter, and he amuses her by pretending to be blind. But Chaplin realized this might be mawkish, and so he developed the notion of a lovely girl, a humble flower seller, who wins the love of the tramp. But he believed he needed more plot. So he created a similar kind of second level in the tramp’s life. The tramp becomes part of a rich man’s game: The millionaire entertains the tramp whenever he is drunk but ignores him when sober.
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